It's apparently allowed everywhere, only because no one's thought to legislate against it. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just that a lot of the wine buying public wants too taste some oak in their wine. With the cost of good oak barrels so high, I guess a lot of wineries figure this is the way to go. So, if a wine costs about $5 to $7, and there's a goodly amount of oak, it should be easy to figure where it came from.

Hi MfwVaan1 and welcome to the board. Unfortunately our resident board expert on wood chips is on vacation in France. When the good Dr. gets back he can answer in depth as he uses oak chips in his milk. WW [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/biggrin.gif[/img]